As Yukie mentioned earlier your dude has gorilla-arms-disease (which seems to be a common problem). I've drastically raised his elbows. Anatomically, they usually fall right above the love handles or higher. I also gave him longer shins, because they were so incredibly short.

As far as posing, I raised his left arm, because with both hands down by his waist it seems more like he's doing a naughty dance, or getting read to roll some dice, neither of which makes me think he's ready for a fight.

As far as blandness, I gave him to stripes on his shoulder just to add something, a belt and buckle, because bad dudes wear belts and it helps break up the torso from the pelvis. As well I slightly hinted at pockets on the jeans. You'll notice also that I gave a ring for his neck. Before it seemed king of like he wore his shirt on backward so it was riding up his neck. I also varied his jaw a bit so it's more manly and tough guy like. Before it was too soft and pudgy.

Last piece of advice, especially since you're new to pixel art (not sure if you're new to art in general): on complicated pieces like this, you should really fine tune the anatomy of your character, style and costume, and especially the pose, before starting to animate. It will cut down on development time when you have to make a correction and then go through every frame and correct it (this is only 5 frames so it's not as big a deal as it could be). So in short, put up a still picture of your character, get critiqued on that, then once you're satisfied, move on to animating.

Okay, one last piece of advice: if you think something looks wrong with your picture, flip it horizontally (meaning if he's looking to his left, flip it so he's look to his right). Almost immediately, you'll notice what's wrong. If you don't, then flip it vertically so he's standing on his head. If you still don't notice what's wrong then post so you can get some C + C.

This time I mean it, last thing: honestly, my edit can be pushed much, much further. He still kind of looks like he's just standing there, maybe looking at his invisible phone. Bring up both of the arms even further, so they're actually almost chin height and he'll look ready to punch someone's face off.

Thanks! There's a lot of good stuff there. I actually did another edit last night where I cut 2 pixel layers out of the arms above the elbows. The legs are exactly how I want them and give the feeling I want, but I definitely understand your point, thank you! Also, he IS supposed to just be standing there, looking tough, but not like he is about to punch someone's face off! XD

Thank you everyone for your advice! At work right now, but will probably post another edit tonight.

I think that you need to better define your forms. Boxcar was going in the right direction. Also you should avoid banding and using similar tones of same color for shading cause low contrast between them cause blur effect.

Here is quick edit, also I didn't have the time to create animation, but you can easily find some reference animation and learn form them. You can open gif files in PS, Gimp, Graphicgale, (even some websites) etc. and study every frame.

I think that you need to better define your forms. Boxcar was going in the right direction. Also you should avoid banding and using similar tones of same color for shading cause low contrast between them cause blur effect.

Here is quick edit, also I didn't have the time to create animation, but you can easily find some reference animation and learn form them. You can open gif files in PS, Gimp, Graphicgale, (even some websites) etc. and study every frame.

Thanks!

That's a great edit, but the art style of the game matches the way I had the character drawn. The proportions and body style are what I want him to look like. It's a creativity choice more than anything.

Your link definitely educated me on banding and color, but is there pillow shading on my character anywhere? I though I had do e a good job avoiding pillow shading.

Shading against the lines anywhere generally creates banding and pillow-shading -- your biggest offenders are the bicept/tricept areas and under the bottom of the arm all the way to the tip of the visible arm's hand and also the crease in the bend of that arm. You could use a single dark color in those areas and avoid the feel of pillow-shading/banding altogether. If you seriously need that extra color, turn it into some slight AA, closer to the highlight color instead of the shadow color. Shadows should be done more like you did the front-most knee/leg area. Notice how HarveyDentMustDie did his shadows in single-blocks of shades. Lack of outlines aside, this is how sprite shading should be done -- that is, in clusters of a single color over a large enough area to represent the 3d planes/forms as best as possible.

Hopefully you can eliminate this look of pillow-shading by using HDMD's shading as an example of what I mean by 3d planes. You can easily add outlines to this when you're done defining the 3d forms.

Also, just a side note -- even though it's "just cartoony" in terms of style -- that doesn't let you get away without having to treat the cartoon as a 3d form, even if you're going for barely a hint of a lighted form -- so keep that in mind because you'll have to deal with this fact no matter what style of art you do.

I agree with everything astraldata said. If you want to shade this you have to do it properly to make it look properly. If you want full cartoon feel, you can just use two color tones (main and shadow, or main and highlight). A lot of cartoons use this style: